While everyone was going up about the Supreme Court’s block on President Joe Biden’s student loan debt relief plan, the court passed another decision right under our noses. According to NBC News, the court refused to hear the appeal of a Black death row inmate who alleged his jury was picked based on race.
Tony Clark was convicted on murder charges and sentenced to death in the killing of a 13-year-old boy during the robbery of a convenience store back in 2014. His appeal claimed that during the jury selection for his trial, prosecutors unlawfully sought to strike Black jurors based solely on race. That would be in direct violation of the Court’s 1986 ruling that potential jurors can’t be excluded based on race. But alas, Clark’s trial was composed of 11 white people and one Black person.
I believe judicial review could work if the entire point of being a justice was to interpret absolutely every word of the constitution literally. If that was the case, we would actually have a solid foundation to the law of the land. Instead, justices have time and time again made decisions off of words they think are implied even if not stated at all in the constitution.
I don’t think the Constitution’s literal interpretation is perfect, but the entire point is to amend the document as needed.